Showing posts with label viking lesson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label viking lesson. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

In the Artroom: 4th Grade Viking Ships

I'm just gonna tell you right now, this is one photo-heavy blog post. Which is totally not my fault. I blame my amazingly talented 4th grade artists who just so happened to kick some serious Viking butt with this project. They absolutely loved the Viking unit that student teacher Rebecca introduced (before heading off to high school-land) and I really think their amazing work shows it. Call me a brag-a-saurus (been called worse, trust me) but I'm in love with these works of art.
If you've seen some of the our Viking projects this year (like the 1st grade Viking self-portraits or the 3rd grade Viking ships), then you know a coupla things about how the lessons were designed: 1. They're collage-heavy. Seriously, I think I have a teaching problem(s); 2. They incorporate several different techniques and media; 3. And just about all of the projects take approximately a million years to complete.

I know. I told you, I've got teaching problem(sssss).
And yet I keep coming back to projects like these. Le sigh.
What I really enjoyed about teaching this unit was all of the media the children were able to explore (watercolor, colored pencil, permanent pens) as well as the techniques (painting, sketching, shading, collage). So I thought I'd walk you through our big fat Viking Unit. So put on your horned helmet (horny helmet...?) and hang onto your long ship (dare you to say THAT ten times fast), cuz we're about to get our Viking on (er, what? Never mind. Just keep reading, please).
As you know, my classes are 30 minutes long. So on the first day, using a folded 12" X 18" sheet of paper, the students had to decide how they would like their sky to appear. We brainstormed ideas of what could be seen in a day or night time sky. Using oil pastels, students drew stars, clouds, a sun or a moon. They were given both yellow and white oil pastels. From there, they could begin painting but they had to use analogous colors only. Students were encouraged to paint with horizontal brush strokes (and by "encouraged" I mean and the stink eye if scrub-painting commenced). Several students were unable to finish in that short amount of time and were given the opportunity to continue work the following class.
On the third day, students were given a tri-folded piece of 12" X 18" piece of paper. Rebecca introduced them to three different watercolor techniques. For splatter painting, the students were given the choice to paint wet-on-wet or wet-on-dry. For the wet-on-wet technique, students had a small sponge which they could swipe their paper with water before splattering. This gave the splatters a soft look. For wet-on-dry, they simply began splattering which gave more defined dots. For the mid-section, students were to paint wet-on-wet and add a sprinkle of salt when finished. For the last section, students were to again paint wet-on-wet and when finished, cover with a piece of cling wrap. This was left on the paper over night and when removed, had the cool effect you see on the bottom.
The next class, the collaging began. The students cut each of the three sections down the fold. Then they were instructed to tear each section horizontally creating a wavy line. From there, they painted a line of glue (we keep our glue in cups [think butter dish with a lid] and apply with an old paint brush because I HATE glue bottles. But I'll save that tirade for a separate post) on the straight edge of the paper and added it to our sky to create a horizon. Another strip was added directly below that one.

This process was continued until the bottom of the collage was covered in a lovely sea.
Oh! A tip: Once the kids have used the oil pastels and painted over their drawings, sometimes beads of paint will form and leave unsightly dots. If this bothers the kids, have them go back over the (now dry) paintings with oil pastels again. That will cover up the dried paint dots.
We chatted about blending oil pastels to create a three dimensional look for the sun or moon. This genius got it.
For the long ship, the students were given the option to trace a boat template. This ONLY gave them the general shape of the boat, not the head or tail shape (calm down, template-haters. Breathe). From there, the kids were given these directions:
  1. Draw a sea serpent/dragon head and tail in pencil. The kids were shown about a trillion examples (some printed from images found online, some from books).
  2. Add texture somewhere to your sea serpent.
  3. Add shields and add designs to them that represent your Viking clan. The kids traced bottle caps for their circles.
  4. Add curved lines to your ship to show the texture of wood and the 3-D quality of your ship.
  5. Trace in thin Sharpie.
All that mess took a couple of days. They got really into their drawings. Reading the book mentioned in this post as they worked really sparked some creativity. After their drawings were complete, they then had to:
  1. Add color to the sea serpent and the shields using either Sharpies or colored pencils. Shading was demonstrated.
  2. Use watercolor paint on the boat.
  3. Cut out VERY carefully. Which involved me saying a lot of this:
Do NOT cut off the head. Cut in...sloooooow...moootiooooon.
No, I cannot cut it out for you. 
I'm sorry your hand is cramping. Maybe all those spikes weren't the best idea. Keep cutting.
Do you think Vikings whined this much? Me neither.  

Some of them added Vikings to their ships. Oh, the hilarity.
And just when they thought I wasn't mean and cruel enough, I threw creating a 3-D sail into the mix. Go back to that 3rd grade Viking ship post for details on how to make the sail. All this typing is making my hands cramp. Sorry. I'm one of those whiny Vikings, in case you didn't know.
Shading is tricky for these guys...but they CAN do it. We talked and talked and talked about it and...guess what? They got it! Some of them had to make a couple of sails before they were successful, but in the end, we had shaded sails. Victory! Some kids decided to add a clan design to their sail. They were to lay out their pieces before gluing down, as you see above. This helped them settle on a good composition.
Are you checking out this detailed cutting work? And this was by one of my hand-crampers. I knew she could do it.
And this one was by my friend who said he couldn't shade. When he finished that sail, I had him to hold it up so the class could give him a round of applause. And then I put him in charge of encouraging other slacker-sail makers. A job he did very well.
So, one million years later, we've got Viking ships! And I really don't know who is the most proud, the kids or me...although I'm guessing it will probably be Rebecca. 

Okay, the end. You can take off your horny hat now. Thanks for reading.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

In the Art Room: Vicious Vikings!

If ever the words adorable and Viking could be used together in a sentence, it would have to be upon viewing these painted and collage-tastic works of art. I mean, just scroll down and take in the hilarity. Super-Awesome-Cuteness-Overload. With a touch of axe-wielding angst. The perfect combo for a Viking, says these first and second grade artists.

(hey. I'm whispering this to you. that's why it's in italics and lower case. all images of children that you see here are published with permission of viking parents. because i like my job and would prefer not to get fired.)
Now before I go into the details of this lesson, I have to give a big fat hairy shout out to my (sadly, former) student teacher Rebecca who taught these young artists as well as Laura of Painted Paper who inspired this lesson. Rebecca taught the first through fourth grade students a Viking unit based on her summer travels through Norway. You can see the third graders' Viking ship collages here. For the younger artists, she decided to create a lesson that turned the kids themselves into Vikings.

On the first day of the lesson, the kids painted the papers for their backgrounds. In one (insanely busy) half hour class, the kids chose one 12" X 18" piece of construction paper for the back ground and two pieces of 12" X 9" paper in white and green. And here's how it went down in bullet points. Because I love me some bullet points:
  • (oh, so pointy!) The kids began with the larger paper. Using a sponge the size of their hands, they stamped white paint all over the top half of the paper. Once finished, they chose a smaller sponge and two colors of their choice to blend into the white paint for their sky.
  • From there, the children moved onto the two smaller papers. On these, they were to use a dry brush technique with green, white and yellow.
All that in 1/2 hour. Hence the gray hairs
The following class, Rebecca showed the kids a Power Point (is that one word? Should it be in caps? Do I really care?) of her travels and the beautiful landscape of Norway in the summer. The kids were then shown how to tear each of their green painted papers lengthwise and glue them down. The trick to teaching this lesson is making sure that the children begin gluing the background land first and slowly work toward the foreground. I'm kinda in love with this collage technique. I used it here for our Paris collages and here for our Egyptian ones.
For the body and assorted details of the Viking, the kids created another piece of painted paper. I wrote an entire blog post about this process which you can read all about here, if you wanna.

Our end result looked a little like this. The side on the right was used for the body of the Viking. For this, the kids cut the entire painted paper in half, folded the side you see on the right in half and, along the fold, traced half of a Viking body template and cut it out. Now before you freak out because a template was used, lemme 'splain myself: 1. I have a half an hour. Sometimes short cuts are a necessity. 2. Folding the paper in half, tracing half a template, cutting and opening the paper to discover (surprise!) a whole Viking body is an excellent means of teaching symmetry.

As the children worked on that, Rebecca called the kids aside for their Viking photo-op. She took two photos of the kids: a picture day smile and a fierce Viking face photo. In the following class, the children were able to chose between the two.
At the start of the next couple of classes, Rebecca would introduce a new fact about the Vikings to the children. They learned all about Viking culture, clothing, the long ships and long houses as well as their fierce ways.

The kids learned that they'd have to create a helmet, shield, weapon and some clothing for their Viking. Oh and "weird animal skin shoes" as one student called them today.
One of my favorite things about these Vikings is how some appear to be missing some teeth! This Vike-ette musta been in some rough battles to get her teeth knocked out. Either that or she's from Kentucky (just kidding, Kentucky friends!).
Once the kids chose their photo, they carefully cut around their face and glued it to their body. Braids and beards were added with construction paper which is much easier than it sounds. For this, Rebecca and I split the boys and girls up so that we could give individual demos to each group. Once the hair stylings were complete, helmets were added.
The next couple of classes were spent collaging boots, belts, sheilds and, everyone's favorite weapons! Well, almost everyone's favorite. I did have two sweet students who asked if their Viking could be reading instead of wielding a weapon. What were they reading, you ask? One was holding a book titled "How to be a Good Viking." Adorbs.
Don't tell anyone but this Viking's face is secretly my fave. With his expression and that mustache, he reminds me of Salvador Dali, don't you agree? I love it.
As a wrap up, I asked the kids the following questions today: Who were the Vikings? What did they do? Where did they live? I jotted down their answers on the board and I was so proud of everything they had learned. I wish Rebecca could have been there, it was a happy teacher moment for sure. 

The students were to then write a small paragraph about their Viking. With the exception of the one that said his Viking "cills peepel" (yikes! Gonna do a rewrite!), what they wrote was so fun to read. Almost as fun as those Vikings themselves! 


In other news...I now have a Facebook page for this blog! You can go and like it (or not, be that way) here:


Because I'm super computer un-savvy, I've yet to figure out how to create a link on this blog to take you directly to my facebook page. My apologies. I blame my pea-sized brain. If any of you computer geniuses out there would like to offer some advice, I'll gladly take it. In the meantime, up there's the linky-loo, "like" if you like. And thanks for dropping by!
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